Porto Alegre: "Winning is not the most important thing," an admired Dutch coach called Foppe de Haan once said. "The most important thing is to play a good game.’' It is an historically un-Australian sentiment that by some sort of alchemy this morning has become a proudly arch-Australian sentiment.

In perhaps the performance not just of these relatively nondescript Socceroos' lives, but of all their famous forebears', too, they led the Netherlands once, and should have shaded them again, and lost only to an all-too-human moment of goalkeeping fallibility, but lost nothing else in the moment and gained immensely on the day, not least in respect, and admiration, and affirmation of the direction they are taking under Ange Postecoglou.

"Heart-breaking," said Postecoglou, but if he can put the pieces back together the way he has put this team and game together, it will barely miss a beat. They played a good game; they didn't win. Nor did reigning World Cup champion Spain, which was upset 2-0 to Chile and will be with the Socceroos on the first plane home after they have played one another in a dead rubber in Curitiba on Monday (Tuesday morning AEST). If the Socceroos accorded Chile too much deference, perhaps Spain did not show it enough. So, in the blink of an eye, is the soccer world re-landscaped.

The Socceroos gave the Netherlands a tough match. Photo: AFP

Though without points to show yet, Australia will feel that it is coming away with spoils. The shiniest is Tim Cahill's fifth World Cup goal, and last, since he is disqualified from the Spain game. It was literally out of fresh air, a left-foot volley from Ryan McGowan's angled cross, with the Dutch defence collapsing towards him and the sun in his eyes, into the roof of the net.

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As breathtaking acts go, it was of a kind with the gaucho in a steakhouse here uses with twirling bolas to part the hair of conscripted audience members. Bolas are balls on the end of hand-held cords, typically used by cowboys to sweep cattle off their feet. They are big on ball tricks at arm's length in this country.

There was another goal, making three in all so far; Postecoglou noted without smugness the many predictions of a scoreless tournament. There was Mathew Leckie, bustling his way out of the German second division into the football world's approving consciousness. There were other glimpses. Some will prove fleeting, but others should fill out before our eyes and step into the boots that Cahill must soon vacate and ring down the golden generation's curtain, though he is not the type to go gently into that good night.

World Cup 2014: Australia v the Netherlands highlights

There is the impression Australia leaves. Dutch football is riven with debate about whether manager Louis van Gaal's formations honour the sacred Dutch tradition of "total football". Unwittingly, but powerfully, Australia weighed into disputation in two ways. One was by its searching and forceful football in the first half, which van Gaal admitted made philosophical contemplations redundant. "The thing is, if you lose possession of the ball so simply and so often, formation doesn't matter," he said.

"Fanatical" Australia - van Gaal's adjective - unnerved the Netherlands. Against Spain, the Dutch had nothing to lose, against Australia everything, including face. They played subtotal football. The Socceroos played their form of total football, at the Australian exchange rate: aggressive, robust, fearless. One panicky Dutch clearance landed almost in the hands of Postecoglou, who applauded.

For Australia, it became double-edged. At half-time, van Gaal reverted from his preferred 5-3-2 to 4-3-3, the classic total football arrangement. Critics will say it was an admission of near defeat. He said it was because he had to change something. It proved decisive. Duly, though not immediately, the Dutch played more composed and incisive football in the second half.

The first four goals came in two pairs of quick exchanges. Arjen Robben struck in contradiction to the shape of the match then, and you could just about hear the release of compressed air from his piston of a left leg. But even as the Dutch celebrated, van Gaal convened the defence on the touchline, clipboard in hand, not convinced the Australian threat was in hand. He was right. Cahill cancelled the Netherlands' lead immediately.

In the second half, substitute Oliver Bozanic's beaverish endeavour won a penalty for Australia and captain Mile Jedinak nervelessly converted it. Robin van Persie, previously subdued, but now left with a metre of space, wrested that one back instantly for the Netherlands.

Half an hour remained and the match was at its crossroad. Soccer's little big country and big little country were peers on the pitch, equal on the scoresheet, level even acoustically. But the little big country has been this way many times before, and the way home is written in its genes. The last pass came when Tommy Oar, who might have shot, tried to set up Leckie, who couldn't. "We're going to win this match," van Gaal ejaculated in his dug-out.

The Dutch swept the ball to the other end, where substitute Memphis Depay's speculative, scudding long-range strike eluded Australian goalkeeper Mat Ryan, who should have been more smartly onto it, and knew it, and at the final whistle would sink to his haunches and pull a towel over his head and remain beyond even the coach's consolation. "We win as a team, we lose as a team," said Postecoglou.

The Dutch had taken the lead against the run of play, and had it again now in contradiction of the scales of justice at that point, and for all their early raggedness would not fritter it away this time. They looked the likelier team to score again in last 15 minutes of the match, as the team-sheet and form-book suggested they should have been from the start. For an hour, this essentially foetal Australian team had made a nonsense of history and all its received wisdom. For a minute, it looked about to make fabulous history itself. "This is now our benchmark," said Postecoglou.

At the final whistle, the crowd's plaudits for the Socceroos were as loud as for the Dutch; all partisanship was forgotten now. On the pitch, too, Dutch and Australian players mingled fraternally and exited as one, their respect mutual and, well, total. "There is no better medal," said Dutch legend and total football master Johan Cruyff, "than being acclaimed for your style."

19 Jun Give them the World Cup. Give it to both of them. There can be no more appropriate way of rewarding -Australia and Holland for entertaining us so exquisitely, after a game that resembled a large city in its -inescapable sense that something, somewhere, was always happening. It was a ball, a brawl, a banquet, a blast: more than that, though, it was a brilliant way to spend 90 minutes.

19 Jun For four glorious second-half minutes it looked as if Australia might be on the verge of perhaps their greatest ever World Cup result when Mile Jedinak's penalty added to Tim Cahill's first-half wonder strike to put them 2-1 up against the rampaging Netherlands in this Group B fixture in Porto Alegre.